Motorola's in a curious position. Still running at a loss technically, if you don't count their "Google money", Motorola is considerably doing worse than HTC - another "troubled" Android OEM. Google's acquisition of Motorola Mobility
closed over a year ago, yet we're still waiting for those devices fully developed under the Google umbrella. Not to say that products like the
DROID RAZR M (and it's close cousin, the
Intel-powered RAZR i) and
DROID RAZR HD were bad products. They just felt like they were a step behind the big players of that era (namely the Samsung Galaxy S3 and HTC One X).
At Techweek Chicago, comments by Jim Wicks, SVP Consumer Experience Design, seem to position Motorola's next effort as not playing the spec war - hyping the user experience and making "people's lives better" vs. faster processors, more RAM, more megapixels. Comments like this point back to Google I/O, where there was discussion of activity aware APIs where your Android-powered smartphone can know if you're walking, running, cycling or driving. Pair this with Google Now and you've got smart computing. Motorola is no stranger to innovative concepts like this - see MOTOACTV, Webtop. Infusing a Google perspective can only make it better.
But who's the target audience? Iqbal Arshad, SVP Engineering & Product Development, mentions the 5.5 billion people that don't own a smartphone. With Samsung running away with Android, and HTC having a hit with the One, Motorola might be eyeing a play at a sector where Nokia and now BlackBerry have found success - emerging markets. Does that mean
Motorola's next effort will fall into what people here consider midrange or even low-end? If it can deliver on a
"better is better" approach, will a midrange classification even matter (to the masses of course, not tech nerds that hang around sites like this)?
Does a MOTO X need to match a Samsung Galaxy S4 or an HTC One spec for spec just to compete?
The hype around the Motorola MOTO X is very high. What will the measure of success be? And will it be realistic?
More -
From Techweek in Chicago -
https://twitter.com/Motorola/status/350262667891572737: "It is passion - the willingness to bend rules, break rules and go beyond - that will drive innovation" - Jim Wicks
https://twitter.com/Motorola/status/350262953561436160: "We're not talking about technology, we're talking about people. The technology exists to make people's lives better."
https://twitter.com/mkeating312/status/350263665959768065: "You don't need to be the technologist to be the only one innovating."- Jim Wicks
https://twitter.com/Motorola/status/350264955423047681: "We know that the future of devices is smart computing." -Iqbal Arshad, SVP Engineering & Product Development
https://twitter.com/Motorola/status/350265117637738497: "Our industry needs to start building better designs that solve real consumer needs." -Iqbal Arshad
https://twitter.com/Motorola/status/350265713971310596: "There are about 5.5 billion people who don't have a smartphone. Our goal is to make their lives better." -Iqbal Arshad
https://twitter.com/Motorola/status/350266124157468673: "Today, Motorola feels like a startup. Our ambitions are big. Our pace is simply insane." -Iqbal Arshad